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Naval Plans for the World's Naval Powers

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Cybvep said:
Again, not really. 200 u-boats on patrol was the "ideal" figure and considering that the Germans had 159 at one point and ~100 for about two years AND that the Kriegsmarine didn't receive as much attention as the Luftwaffe or the Heer, I think that the number was feasible. Not by 1939, of course, but by 1942-43.
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but the plan was to have them at the beginning of the war not close to the end. germany had very shortly 159 boots when you count all boots and that after they invested heavily into building more boots. that still only half of what dönitz considered to be ideal.
more was not really possible without letting the army and airforce pay for it.

Secret Master said:
comsubpac,

If you have noticed, Thebromgrev and a few others here have run experiments to determine the feasibility of naval build plans in-game. As a result of these inquiries, we have already determined that the lack of shipyard limitations means that even the most ridiculous and insane pre-war build plans are feasible in game for major powers. (Go look at my experiment with Stalin's build plan... sheesh.)

I was not trying to brag or argue that Donnitz's plan was historically feasible. I was simply forestalling the obvious question from my colleagues here as to whether the build plan was feasible prior to 1941. And I was half-joking. Anyone who's built a ton of subs already knows that getting to at least 50% practicals in subs is super easy, making them dirt cheap.

"Donnitz, we lost 100 sub flotillas during Sea Lion. What are we going to do?

"No problem! Speer already told me that he has another 100 flotillas slated for construction during the next year. We'll be fine. So quit your whining and get back to training the new submarine crews. And tell Jurgen Prochow to quit trying to win an Academy Award every time I order him to Gibraltar!"
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you can easily build 50 battleships as germany. if you search for "feasibility of naval build plans in-game" nearly everything is feasible. when you speak about plan Z and you compare it to other countries which have actually build the fleets mentioned here you have to keep in mind that the plan is completely unrealistic and impossible.
 
159 on patrol. Also, in case Germany concentrated on the navy, they would probably go to war at a later date.

And again, the active number of u-boats was supposed to be at ~200.

more was not really possible without letting the army and airforce pay for it.
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Yes, but it's always like that. You cannot have everything.
 
comsubpac said:
you can easily build 50 battleships as germany. if you search for "feasibility of naval build plans in-game" nearly everything is feasible. when you speak about plan Z and you compare it to other countries which have actually build the fleets mentioned here you have to keep in mind that the plan is completely unrealistic and impossible.
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I never said anything about Plan Z. All I said was that it was feasible to build 100 sub flotillas by 1940 or so without losing the war. While that might not be useful information to you, it might be useful to others who read this thread. This thread isn't just for you, you know.

And no, not every build plan the major powers had prior to the war is feasible in the game. If you had read previous posts, you will know that France's build plan is NOT possible, even if France just ignores the army and air force completely. As for the Soviet build plan, it is only feasible if you keep the Soviet Union in a state of continuous war from 41 to the end of the game, and you don't lose any ground to the Germans during the war, and you puppet Japan, and you have foreknowledge of the coming war. Of course it's ridiculous. If you had read my entries in the thread, you would know that I specifically state that Stalin's historical plan is insane in a historical context; the Soviets in HOI3 can build entire SAGs in Siberia and then magically teleport them to a port, avoiding Luftwaffe bombing of shipyards. And this does not even factor in the fact that I more or less impoverished the Soviet people to a level about as bad they had it during the historical war, except the Germans occupied nothing in my attempt and the Great Patriotic War lasted less than half as long. My analysis of the Soviet build plan in the game determined that, while it is feasible, it is irrelevant to any normal run of HOI3. You won't be able to build Stalin's ideal fleet until a point in the game where it's irrelevant anyway.

This may not be news to you, but it was news to me and would be news to anyone who referenced this thread without a few years of HOI3 under their belt. (I actually thought the build plan would not be successful due to the variety of ship types; I did not anticipate the long term impact of heavy industry emphasis combined with 50% practicals in most ship building categories over the course of 5 or more years. That was an eye opening experience for me, much more than the USN build plan.)
 
Yep, a lot of things are feasible in the game which weren't historically, and many things were feasible historically but not in the game. For starters, France is WAY underpowered. It's missing about 150 brigades and doesn't have enough IC or high enough starting practicals to build its historic navy, let alone its upgrades to the French armed forces before the war starts. The USSR is about 500 brigades short of what it really had in 1936, and Japan doesn't have enough IC to build up its historic navy plus aircraft while having enough troops to fulfill its land combat obligations. 80% of the IJA was in China and Manchuria (guarding Soviet border) between 1937 and 1945, meaning that the 20% not deployed in Japan itself was more than enough to give the Allies hell. In the game, Japan simply can't build enough troops to replicate that along with building the navy it really had.

Now, since Plan Z came up, my challenge to anyone reading this is to first try building Germany's 1934 build plan and see how well it does and see if you can still win the land war the same way you normally do. Then, try it again with Plan Z using the correct ship models, which are defined in the file ../hoi3/units/models/GER - Ships.txt and see if you can fight the war while building all of those ships in the plan, aside from the Hippers, Bismarcks, and Scharnhorsts which need to start in '37 or '38, beginning in 1939. I've done it before and found that I didn't actually need the ships due to the UK's crap-tastic AI (gee, why patrol the North Sea when we can patrol the Atlantic instead?). I'd be very curious to see how other people do.

Or, better yet, try building the historical Italian navy and see if you can hold your own against the UK in the Middle East. Taking that a step further, why don't we just pick a plan and try it out to see if we can actually complete it in the game? The Dutch one is doable if you ignore the battlecruisers, but since you're lucky to simply survive for more than a week the Dutch plan is probably by far the most difficult to implement, next to the French and Soviet ones. I'm sure PI would find the results to be interesting (whether or not they act on the results is a different matter), and players and modders alike would like to know how closely possible it is to follow history.
 
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"Don't...tempt me, boy!" (Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring)
 
France has always been underpowered in HOI games. I never understood why the devs didn't simply give the French completely outdated doctrines, terrible doctrine theory levels, unstable political situation etc. instead of artificially decreasing the size of their army. The French had good tanks IRL and a massive army in 1940. The fate of their navy was also one of the most important questions after their surrender, because it could affect the balance of force in the Mediterranean. In HOI games you usually have only enough IC to build some infantry while scraping all naval builds.
 
okay, started a German game (FtM) with the intention to build the '34 plan. seems perfect for the Germans: not too much research, nice practical bonuses (with all those cruisers). mostly doable by 1939-1940, it seems. and if you do the gamey thing of volunteer army/ CGO, you can actually build most of the stuff you usually do (with the exception of rocket test sites and transport planes). it is now middle of 1937. I have 55 inf, 2 mot, 3 Larm (3 more Larm and 2 more mots building), 20 int, 8 or 9 tactical bombers.
the only thing I wonder is: will they be powerful enough to last against the RN? Time will tell.
 
My guess is they won't be enough, but much easier to build before the war than Plan Z or the '38 build plan.

For those who are interested, I'm redoing the German entry. The info will stay the same, but I'm changing the format to give a better breakdown between what Germany planned to build, what it had, and what it really did build. I've finished its starting OOB and what Germany should have in the build queue, and only have left to breakdown its subs into classes like I did for the other navies. Update finished.
 
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preliminary result.
'34 plan finished in time for the great balloon (except 2 subs): total: 3 cv, 11 CA, 18 CL, 10 DD, 14 SS (last 2 still in queu). organised into 3 battle fleets, each with 1 CV, 2 CA, 2 CL, 2 DD. remaining (older) CL into recon fleet for Baltic patrol. the rest, along with the Baltic Fleet acting as Transport escorts.
Battle of the Baltic. In a fierce running battles up the entire length of the Baltic, the Kriegsmarine engaged some of the RN's older ships.
RESULTS
RN losses: 4 DD, 4 CL (Capetown, Curlew, Emerald, Enterprise), 1 CA (Norfolk), 1 CVL (Eagle), 2 BB (Barham, Queen Elisabeth), commanded by Cunningham and Ramsey. no survivors

KM losses: 1 SS (coming in from the Atlantic for repairs and getting sunk just outside Kiel; talk about bad luck). several screens badly mauled.

in all honesty, those were "just" Barham, QE and screens. I assume that going up against the likes of, say, Force H or the Midway task force, would have far worse results. I did notice that the destroyers got in a few good licks and Barham was finished off by one of my CLs. So; in a 1934 mindset, it has a certain power.
 
What did you use your other 5 CA for? Did you rotate them with the ones in your battle fleets? How teched up were your carriers? Darn, now I have to go try this out and see how well (or not) it does :D
 
since i wanted them ready for the big show, I started as soon as I could. did somethin gamey too (build 5 CVL without CAGs and scrapped them on completion, just for the practical). So Graf Zeppelin is lvl-1, Seydlitz is lvl-2 and Peter Strasser is lvl-3. the older CAs were reserves, but there was no need to replace them as my CAs and CVs got through it relatively unharmed. unless I missed it, the CAs never even fired a single shot.
 
new test. this time with SF/ICE because they have the right ship types.
test subject: the most gloriously foolhardy Plan Z.
date: 1st august 1939.
army: 55 inf, 2 mtn, 7 panzers, 3 mot, 3 SS-mot regiments, 1 SS-inf div.
airforce: 6 CAGS, 5 CAS, 2 flying boats, 17 interceptors, 1 nav, 9 tac, 2 transports

of these, the SS units, the nav and the flying boats are "free" (well, paid for with IC and/or supplies, not build).

kriegsmarine: 2 BC (scharnhorst-class), 2 BB (Bismarck-class), 32 DD (most lvl 4 and 5),5 Spähkreuzers, 5 CA (adm. Hipper-class), 18 CL (including 12 M-class), 11 SS, 3 pocket BB, 2 pre-Dreadnoughts, 12 transports, 6 torpedo boats and 3 motor torpedo boats.

still in queu: 1 mot and 1 panzer (finished by the end of the month), 3 CV, 6 SHBB (H-class), 1 pocket BB (P-class), 1 gar, 1 naval base, 1 radat and 1 air base.

am still missing: 8 pocket BB, 1 CV, 3 O-class BC and 39 SS.
the ones in the queu will be finished by december 1941 (not counting practical decay :sad:)

edited: that were 5 Spähkreuzers, not 32 ;-)
 
The HPP has the right ship types as well, excluding torpedo boats, but rather than have unique units it has different models. In my finished Teutonic Dreams AAR I actually build a slightly modified version of the Plan Z fleet using the correct models using the HPP mod. Vanilla models are about 50/50 when it comes to accuracy. It doesn't have the "tech resolution" to model the slight differences between ship classes that the HPP does, so it doesn't have a lot of ship classes as a result. ICE gets around the "tech resolution" problem by making unique units, whereas the HPP added more tech levels between 1918 and 1934 to represent interwar progress. The models vanilla does have are about 75% correct, with the remaining 25% of model names leaving me scratching my head thinking "what is this?". Destroyer and light cruiser models are the biggest offenders when it comes to wrong class names, with Germany, Italy, and the USSR being the worst. For the most part the wrong class names are due to PI picking an individual ship to name the class instead of using the actual name of the class. For example, rather than have a 1936-class destroyer, PI chose to have a Z17-class destroyer, since Z17 was the first destroyer in the class. The Italian cruiser classes are likewise a complete mess, as PI picked random ships in the class as the model name, but didn't include the ship's full name in the model text. One example is the vanilla Abruzzi-class, which is named after the ship Duca degli Abruzzi, meaning the class name should be Duca degli Abruzzi-class instead of Abruzzi-class.
 
yeah, but I don't have HPP installed right now (long story, don't ask) and I know the ICE Germany better.
anyway. the main problem is: I have plenty of troops for Poland. possbily enough for France. but for SU? where am I going to find enough ICE to train another 50-odd divs? unless I go 2+2. I could spam arty like all hell broke loose.
in short: my test proves conclusively that, unless you're playing HPP where you can extend the UK's DoW by being careful, plan Z just steals too much IC in the three-year period you have.
a thought. what would happen if I started with the boots and wheels first? what do you think?
 
That's the historical German approach. Construction on Plan Z didn't start until '38, when the original "Plan Z" was created. Plan Z is actually a reduction from Build Plan III, which was made in 1938 and is a revision of the 1934 build plan, and is the reason the H-class BBs and M-class CLs were laid down in 1938. That means Germany spent '36 and '37 training troops, building planes, and making weapons for its army.
 
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actually, I seem to remember a website that said Germany only had about 48 divs in 1939 and massive building started after the Anschluss. o well, so '36 to '41 would become '38 to '43. nicely coincides with the time Hitler wanted to start making waves.

I could always just sit behind the Westwall until then. has anyone tried leaving Poland alone just to see what the Ruskies would do?
 
misterbean said:
I could always just sit behind the Westwall until then. has anyone tried leaving Poland alone just to see what the Ruskies would do?
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In FtM, the answer is that the Soviets will wait until you are at war with the Allies, and then wait until they get to 42 or 43 (not sure which right now) and then will DOW Poland and annex, getting a border with you so they can DOW you next.

Stalin won't sit on his hands unlike other versions of HOI3. He will just build up for an extra year or two, then attack. You can't leave Poland neutral and skip out of a war with the Soviets.

EDIT: But if you just need a breather of a few years, this is viable. Note, however, that the AI is pretty good about spamming IC as the Soviets, so the longer you wait for an inevitable war with the Soviet Union, the stronger they become. The AI still won't beat you in terms of IC if you IC-whore as Germany, but imagine the Soviet AI building units with Soviet manpower with about 300 IC for an extra year or two.
 
hell. right then. Plan Z take two. FtM version this time, just because that is what most people will be using.
 
that one works. I have 100 inf, 11 arm, 4 Larm, 10 mot, 32 int, 12 tac, 6 cas. Kriegsmarine: screens are all ready. now working on the combat capitals, which should be finished by mid-to-late 1940. It is now april 1939. so I must admit that it can be done with the IC Germany starts with. first spam int, a few tac, and the cas throughout 1936. then get to work on the land forces. it is amazing what one can accomplish in one year if you put your back into it. this can be done by say april 1938. DD first, then CL, CA and BC (Scharnhorst en Gneisenau). as IC frees up, use it to start on the Bismarck-class ships and Graf Zeppelin, adding others as you go.
and since I reinstalled HPP today (last version for SF), I can't wait to start a fresh campaign. so I'll call the experiment a success, provided you don't plan on a 1939 Sealion or Weserübung.
 
okay, first naval battles for Germany. first one: Baltische flotte (starting OOB plus Emden) attacked by a battleship squadron in the Baltic. they would have been toast, but I send an ad-hoc force to aid them. sunk Barham plus a destroyer flotilla at the cost of Emden; pretty good.
second battle: the entire home fleet (25 ships!)had gathered in the Frisian Coast to support a naval invasion. by this time I had both Peter Strasser and Graf Zeppelin. send out two fleets, made up like in your AAR. sank HMS Hood, a CA and a couple of CL, but at the cost of Bismarck and Tirpitz. how's that for intense? Hood and Bismarck both go down at the same time.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is a point where stacking penalties become overruled by sheer firepower. there wasn't even a RN carrier around!
 
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